In the Veda the Pit_ri_s, or fathers, are invoked together with the Devas, or gods, but they are not confounded with them. The Devas never become Pit_ri_s, and though such adjectives as d e v a are sometimes applied to the Pit_ri_s, and they are raised to the rank of the older classes of Devas (Manu III. 192, 284, Yâ_gñ_avalkya I. 268), it is easy to see that the Pit_ri_s and Devas had each their independent origin, and that they represent two totally distinct phases of the human mind in the creation of its objects of worship. This is a lesson which ought never to be forgotten. We read in the Rig-Veda, VI. 52, 4: "May the rising Dawns protect me, may the flowing Rivers protect me, may the firm Mountains protect me, may the Fathers protect me at this invocation of the gods." Here nothing can be clearer than the separate existence of the Fathers, apart from the Dawns, the Rivers, and the Mountains, though they are included in one common Devahûti, however, or invocation of the gods. We must distinguish, however, from the very first, between two classes, or rather between two concepts of Fathers, the one comprising the distant, half-forgotten, and almost mythical ancestors of certain families or of what would have been to the poets of the Veda, the whole human race, the other consisting of the fathers who had but lately departed, and who were still, as it were, personally remembered and revered. The old ancestors in general approach more nearly to the gods. They are often represented as having gone to the abode of Yama, the ruler of the departed, and to live there in company with some of the Devas (Rig-Veda VII. 76, 4, devânâ_m_ sadhamâda_h_; Rig-Veda X. 16, 1, devânâ_m_ va_s_anî_h_). We sometimes read of the great-grandfathers being in heaven, the grandfathers in the sky, the fathers on the earth, the first in company with the Âdityas, the second with the Rudras, the last with the Vasus. All these are individual poetical conceptions.[281] Yama himself is sometimes invoked as if he were one of the Fathers, the first of mortals that died or that trod the path of the Fathers (the pit_ri_yâ_n_a, X. 2, 7) leading to the common sunset in the West.[282] Still his real Deva-like nature is never completely lost, and, as the god of the setting sun, he is indeed the leader of the Fathers, but not one of the Fathers himself.[283]